How Dave Bautista went from wrestler to Guardian of the Galaxy

Dave Bautista was one of the biggest wrestling stars in the world, winning the WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship titles a total of six times. Having stepped out of the ring in 2010 -- bar a handful of guest matches since -- Bautista has instead focussed on building an acting career. His latest appearance is his biggest yet, starring as Drax the Destroyer in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, where he brings deadpan humour to the team's muscle.

Wired.co.uk speaks with Bautista on combatting nerves, his first faltering steps into the world of acting, and overcoming the stigma of being a former wrestler.

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Wired.co.uk: A lot of Guardians was shot in London. How are you finding being back now you're not filming?

Dave Bautista: It's good. I'd rather just be hanging out than stressing out. I mean, it's been a busy couple of days so I'm pretty tired. We just had the premiere and it's been a long three weeks -- travelling a lot, doing press, not sleeping much.

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Your path into acting was unusual, even for a former wrestler. One of your first appearances was on the Australian soapNeighbours, as yourself, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's one of the things that happened through WWE. I don't remember how it happened but I was just as surprised to be there as they were to see me. I didn't know it was as big as it was. I'd never heard of the show so I was just expecting to show up and the set would be like one studio. It was the strangest thing, like an old abandoned school. It was a huge production and it's surprising that they did so well because they didn't seem to put a lot into it.

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You were also in Smallville as a Kryptonian villain. Do you have a love for the geek material?

Oh for sure, man, I'm a true blue geek at heart. The

Smallville gig was another one of those things I got through WWE. At that point I had absolutely no aspirations to pursue acting.

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I did this cameo role as a favour to a friend. It was a movie called Wrong Side of Town. It was a very small role and it wasn't very good, but that's how I caught the bug. It may sound generic, but it's true. I fell in love with it.

It largely gets overlooked, but there is the storytelling element to wrestling, the plotlines around faces and heels.Did that help?

It's a different kind of performance entirely. For one, I was never very good at the backstage stuff or the promo stuff with interviews. I was always better with the in-ring stuff, the physical performances. Wrestling's so big and so broad, whereas this feels is more intimate and small.

Is the WWE the only avenue for wrestling stardom now?It's absorbed or destroyed most of its competition.

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I think you could still make a good living elsewhere, but WWE has the monopoly on televised wrestling.

You worked with Vin Diesel, the voice of Groot inGuardians before, on the last Riddick film. Was that coincidence?

Complete coincidence. I really give him credit for helping me out with Riddick, because that was his baby and he was the one who hired me. And he was helping me out all the time on set, giving me advice. It was a complete coincidence that we both ended up on Guardians because he wasn't actually cast until we wrapped filming. I only saw him again when we started on the Hollywood press circuit.

So he and Bradley Cooper [Rocket Raccoon's voice] were doing their thing entirely separately from you guys on the set?

Yeah. Oddly enough, I met Bradley when we were filming and he was over in London for Wimbledon and we met at a gym. We got talking and he didn't know anything about me -- he wasn't a wrestling fan -- and I told him I was over here for

No, actually. Riddick was. That was much more green-screen. Marvel had these huge, elaborate sets we were working on. They green-screen some of the characters but there were always live people for us to interact with, stand-ins or doubles for Rocket and Groot. Riddick, on the other hand, had one very small set and basically the rest of it was green screen.

There are a couple of scenes in Guardians, a major one being at the end of the Knowhere sequence, where you're the only physical character on screen. What was the experience of shooting those like for you?

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We did it a few different ways. We did a bunch of reference shots, stand-in shots. We sometimes had a stand-in we'd exchange dialogue with. Sometimes we had an eyeline that was just something to be looking at like a red X or a laser pointer, like a cat.

Sometimes we had a little stuffed toy -- we called him Stuffy and he was like a three-foot racoon! There were a bunch of different ways.

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I'm particular about the projects that I've chosen. Each one of them, I've taken a step up, like climbing a ladder. Before it was baby-steps, up to Riddick. Then I took this huge leap onto Guardians! It was such a higher level, this huge project which originally I never thought I'd have a chance in hell of getting. Each time I was called back it became more nerve-wracking and more real. And of course there was a bigger chance I wouldn't get the part. It's just one of those things --

I'm still new to acting and haven't found my comfort zone with it.

I'm still learning and trying to become a better actor. I still feel insecurity.

After you'd been cast, what was it like on set? Did your nerves improve?

Oh, I was still nervous, especially on my first day. I came into shooting about two weeks after everybody else started, so I turn up and everyone was in work mode while I was trying to get caught up, get in the groove with everybody else. There was this huge elaborate prison set and all these extras. It was difficult because you had all these actors who were already in the groove and I was still self-conscious and trying to get there. Yeah, it was nerve-wracking but I fell into a groove after the first day and it became easier.

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Is there still that stigma of being a wrestler going into acting that you have to combat?

Oh yeah, completely. It's one of those things where it's bound to happen but I also realise I look a certain way and they cast me because I look that way. Sometimes it's hard to get people to take me seriously as an actor, when they just see me as this WWE musclehead.

What were your thoughts on the Guardians script?

As James tells the story in his own words, after he did the first revision of the script and took it to Marvel, their notes were "more James Gunn!" He's got that twisted sense of humour and it all really worked out well. I don't know how they'll get into the next script, assuming he'll write it but I'm very interested to read it.

Becoming Drax obviously involves a lot of make-up for the characters' scars and body paint. What was your daily routine with that?

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It was a four-hour application, every day, then about an hour-and-a-half to take it all off. It wasn't the amount of time I was in make up, it was when it got to be really a lot of consecutive days that it became rough. When you're on that third or fourth day, your skin starts to get tender and then at five or six days you want to peel your skin off and take a shower. I had this little perch or saddle to lean on because I couldn't sit down and I'd be doing that for four hours.

I actually liked it! I'm glad that they updated it because he's definitely more menacing now, but I like all the retro stuff, I think it's still cool. I don't know how it'd fit into today's market but I still like it.

Obviously you're already in great shape for wrestling, but did you have to do anything different to prepare for Drax?

No, not really. I put on a few extra pounds because I'd dieted down -- I was about the same weight I am now, just trying to audition and land roles. When I landed the role, I asked James if he wanted me to put on bulk and he said yeah, that he wanted about ten to fifteen pounds. That took about a month -- it's much easier for me to put on weight.

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You play Drax as consistently deadpan. How was that personality developed?

It was when I was first reading my lines and laughing my ass off. It was hysterical so we did it a bunch of ways. Right off the bat, my acting coach gave me the best advice I'd ever had -- "be professional, know your lines so you're familiar with it, but don't go much further because you don't want to be over-rehearsed". You want to go in and let the director direct you and bounce off your fellow actors. Be prepared, but everything else is kind of in the moment. So we had this line, "it would not go over my head, my reflexes are too fast" and we did it a bunch of ways. James wanted me to do it a couple times where I was really proud of myself -- then he said "do it even prouder!" So I stuck my chest out, said it prouder, they picked the take they likes -- movie magic.

You're familiar with the comics so you know Drax's human background has seemingly been dropped. Was that done at the beginning or so they could leave things open for a sequel?

It's such a different version of Drax now, an updated version, and it's so open that I don't know where they'll go with the backstory and everything. To me, it kind of wouldn't make sense if they took the "human soul put in Drax's body" origin now. It would just be kind of weird now. I'd like to know that myself now!

There's a line from Rocket where he says Drax's people are entirely literal. That one line establishes Drax as part of a whole race rather than a human.

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You know, I asked about doing a Drax movie and I really don't think he'd be nearly so interesting if he was surrounded by everyone else who was super-literal too. It'd be a stiff boring movie where everyone's formal and serious.

Where do you see Guardians going after this?

I don't know, to be honest. There'll be sequels because the movie's awesome but that's up to James Gunn's twisted imagination.

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This movie's going to hard to top. Across the board it hits every emotion and it's such a well done script. It really will be hard to top.

What are you personally going to do next?

With the same producers from Riddick, we're going to do an updated version of Kickboxer, Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1989 movie, but we're still waiting for the script to be revised. Hopefully that'll be my next project. I'm the new Tong Po. Hopefully Guardians will open some more doors for me. I'd really like to do some cool indie stuff.